Just got them delivered a few hours ago, unboxed them and have been listening for a few hours on and off. They feel and look to be very nice, quality cans. They feel comfortable on my head with not too much or too little clamping force.
As for the initial sound, I feel they are quite nice. Very spacious sounding, clean crisp highs and a nice, tight bottom end. The low frequencies don't really shine a light onto themselves, but do kick in when the music calls for them.
I'm kind of surprised by the amount of headstage these things deliver. It almost feels to be too much of a good thing. But then, it's not. It's pretty awesome!
I did a quick comparison to my other pair of cans I've got at the office (M80's) and realized that it's really not even a fair comparison. The 550s are a great sounding full sized can while the 80's are actually portable cans. The V-Modas sound Muh-Dy when compared to the AKGs. But then, it's a trade off because I can't really see anyone wearing the 550s as a "portable" can, whereas the 80's most certainly are just that, and sound pretty darn good when looked at just in that way.
The sound easily goes to the 550's, but the wearability around the office, I think, will go to the 80's because I've already "felt" the 550s on my head as I move around doing my daily work stuff. With the 80's, I hardly noticed them much at all, except when my ears became warm.
So as of now, I'm not sure the 550s will stick around. I'll give it a few weeks to see how they feel on my head during the course of a normal work day.
For the folks expecting theirs in the mail, please do post your opinion of these things.
Cheers.
Edit: Just wanted to add that these cans seem to leak almost no sound if the music is played at moderate volumes. A friend at work wanted to give them a listen and while the cans were on his head, I could hear absolutely zero sound coming from the cans. And he couldn't hear a word I was saying even though I was speaking rather loudly to him.
